A tele-immersive collaboration system enables real-time interaction among two or more participants who are geographically separated from each other. This kind of system differs from a conventional video conferencing system by giving each participant the impression that he or she is working in the same physical space as the other remote participants.
One tele-immersive collaboration system provides a shared-space experience using a window metaphor. That is, this type of system gives a first participant the impression that he or she is looking through a transparent window at a second participant, who is located on the opposite side of the window. But this type of collaboration system may have one or more drawbacks. First, this system is not well suited for more than two participants because the window metaphor presupposes only two positions, corresponding to the front and back of a window pane. Second, this system does not readily accommodate a shared workspace in which participants can manipulate virtual objects, that is, without deviating from the principles of the window metaphor to some extent. Third, this system does not provide a suitable mechanism by which each local participant can monitor the manner in which he or she appears to the remote participants. Some video conferencing systems achieve this result by including a small picture in the peripheral region of a display that shows the image of the local participant that is presented to other participants; but this kind of picture may be regarded as distracting and unnatural by the local participant.
The above-noted potential drawbacks are cited by way of example, not limitation.